Robert M. Sapolsky is the author of several works of nonfiction, including Determined, The Trouble with Testosterone, and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. His book Behave was a New York Times bestseller and named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. He and his wife live in San Francisco.
"The odds would seem long against finding a book by a writer who
has the various skills to tranquilize wild East African baboons
with a blowgun, explain the scientific implications of his work,
negotiate treacherous primate power struggles (especially those of
H. sapiens), and write about it all with great wit and humanity.
But A Primate's Memoir is such a book, and Robert M. Sapolsky is
such a writer." --George Packer, author of The Village of Waiting
and Blood of the Liberals "Mr. Sapolsky has been to the end of the
road and come back with some of the best stories you will ever
hear, and, in the process, has put his finger on some vast, comic
common denominator. What you have in your hands is the reason to
read books." --Pete Dexter, author of Paris Trout and The Paperboy
"This engrossing account of Robert Sapolsky's life in science, set
down with style and force, is brilliantly informative (baboons have
long memories, and seek vengeance!) and heartbreakingly acute in
its rendering of African lives, terrains, fates." --Norman Rush,
author of Mating "A Primate's Memoir is witty, erudite, and full of
baboons. What could be bad?" --Allegra Goodman, author of
Kaaterskill Falls "At the end of A Primate's Memoir, I felt as
though I'd been on a guided tour of Africa with a wise, soulful,
funny, generous, and deeply intelligent guide. Loved him, loved his
insights about these strange and distant cultures, loved his
baboons." --Caroline Knapp, author of Pack of Two "[Sapolsky's]
hilarious writing style and sense of the absurd are fairly unique
in the genre...Recommended for college and public libraries.
--Library Journal "A witty concoction blending field biology,
history, hilarious cross-cultural mishaps, and hair-raising
adventure. What Jane Goodall did for chimpanzees, Birute Galdikas
for orangutans, and Diane Fossey for gorillas, Sapolsky does in
spades for baboons...remarkably perceptive...Sapolsky writes...in
an entertaining style that scintillates and charms, making it nigh
impossible not to become an ally of both him and his sometimes
all-to-human baboons...A wild and wondrous account, filled with
passages so funny or so brilliant that the reader wants to grab
someone by the arm and demand, 'Hey, you just gotta listen to
this.'" --Kirkus (starred) "Humorous writing worthy of Gerald
Durrell at his best mixes with hard-eyed descriptions of the
reality of field work in a third-world country...Sapolsky often
wears his heart on his sleeve, and this emotional involvement
combined with the scientific realities of the tales he tells makes
for engrossing reading."--Nancy Bent, Booklist "For all its high
spirits and black humor, A Primate's Memoir is a powerful
meditation on the biological origins of baboon and human misery, as
well as a naturalist's coming-of-age story comparable to Jane
Goodall's and E. O. Wilson's...As a memoirist, Sapolsky is a
mensch, a price among primates."--Caroline Fraser, Outside
Praise for Robert M. Sapolsky "Robert Sapolsky is one of the best
science-writers of our time, able to deal with the weightiest
topics both authoritatively and wittily, with so light a touch they
become accessible to all." --Oliver Sacks "With uncommon expertise
and insight, Robert Sapolsky explains the relation of biology to
complex properties of human behaviors. His perspective...is both
unsettling and liberating." --Edward O. Wilson
"[Sapolsky's] stories are remarkable ... A Primate's Memoir is the
closest the baboon is likely to come - and it's plenty close enough
- to having its own Iliad." --New York Times Book Review "While
Sapolsky's primate observations are always fascinating, his
thoughts on Africa and Africans are even more compelling. As funny
and irreverent as a good ol' boy regaling his friends with
vacation-from-hell stories, Sapolsky can also be disarmingly
emotional . . . Filled with cynicism and awe, passion and humor,
this memoir is both an absorbing account of a young man's growing
maturity and a tribute to the continent that, despite its troubles
and extremes, held him in its thrall." --Publisher's Weekly
(starred review) "[Sapolsky] has a huge appetite for life, fed by
his Brooklyn humor, a death-is-just-around-the-corner kind of
irony. He writes exactly as if he's telling stories around a fire
in the bush. And drinking. And gesturing..." --Los Angeles Times
"Flies along like a well-paced and finely crafted novel.
[Sapolsky's] stories about the Masai are terrific--what with the
kidnapping, the blood-drinking and the blow-darting... A Primate's
Memoir is not set up for a sequel, but reads are most likely to
want one." --Newsday
Few would relish a job requiring proficiency with a blowgun as well as a willingness to put up with parching heat, low pay and copious amounts of baboon shit. But for Sapolsky (The Trouble with Testosterone), a Stanford professor and MacArthur grant recipient, it was literally a dream come true. As a boy in New York City, he'd wanted to live in one of the African dioramas at the Museum of Natural History. One week after graduating from Harvard in the mid-1970s, he got his chance: he went to Kenya to study social behavior in baboons. Hilariously unprepared for the challenges of living in the bush, the nave grad student learned to deal with supply and transportation snafus, army ants and giant cockroaches, safari tourists, dinners of canned spaghetti coated with a mixture of sugar and rancid camel's milk, and surreal government bureaucracies. He developed great fondness for "his" baboons, whose behavior seemed uncannily like that of a bunch of quarrelsome human adolescents, and discovered that their interactions didn't necessarily conform to accepted theories. While Sapolsky's primate observations are always fascinating, his thoughts on Africa and Africans are even more compelling. As funny and irreverent as a good ol' boy regaling his friends with vacation-from-hell stories, Sapolsky can also be disarmingly emotional as in his clear-headed tribute to late gorilla researcher Dian Fossey, and his final chapters, which reveal his rage and impotence as he watched his baboons succumb to a horrific plague. Filled with cynicism and awe, passion and humor, this memoir is both an absorbing account of a young man's growing maturity and a tribute to the continent that, despite its troubles and extremes, held him in its thrall. Agent, Katinka Matson. (Mar. 1) Forecast: Heralded by Oliver Sacks and Edward O. Wilson, and with a well-placed excerpt of this book in Discover magazine, Sapolsky will venture out on a seven-city author tour that should help bring him to the attention of readers interested in animals, Africa, ecology and travel. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
"[Sapolsky's] stories are remarkable ... A Primate's Memoir is the closest the baboon is likely to come - and it's plenty close enough - to having its own Iliad." -The New York Times Book Review
"While Sapolsky's primate observations are always fascinating, his thoughts on Africa and Africans are even more compelling. As funny and irreverent as a good ol' boy regaling his friends with vacation-from-hell stories, Sapolsky can also be disarmingly emotional . . . Filled with cynicism and awe, passion and humor, this memoir is both an absorbing account of a young man's growing maturity and a tribute to the continent that, despite its troubles and extremes, held him in its thrall." -Publisher's Weekly (starred review) "[Sapolsky] has a huge appetite for life, fed by his Brooklyn humor, a death-is-just-around-the-corner kind of irony. He writes exactly as if he's telling stories around a fire in the bush. And drinking. And gesturing..." -Los Angeles Times "Flies along like a well-paced and finely crafted novel. [Sapolsky's] stories about the Masai are terrific--what with the kidnapping, the blood-drinking and the blow-darting... A Primate's Memoir is not set up for a sequel, but reads are most likely to want one." -Newsday
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